f his mouth; 'but I know they can afford
to do without the company of certain gentlemen who shall be nameless,' said
he, looking at Sponge and Puffington as he thought, but in reality showing
nothing but the whites of his eyes. 'I told you so,' said Puffington,
jerking his head towards Jack, as Sponge and he turned their horses' heads
to ride away; 'I told you so,' repeated he; 'that's a specimen of their
style'; adding, 'they are the greatest set of ruffians under the sun.'

The new acquaintances then jogged on together as far as the cross-roads at
Stewley, when Puffington, having bound Sponge in his own recognizance to
come to him when he left Jawleyford Court, pointed him out his way, and
with a most hearty shake of the hands the new-made friends parted.

CHAPTER XXIV

LORD SCAMPERDALE AT HOME

[Illustration]

We fear our fair friends will expect something gay from the above
heading--lamps and flambeaux outside, fiddlers, feathers, and flirters in.
Nothing of the sort, fair ladies--nothing of the sort. Lord Scamperdale 'at
home' simply means that his lordship was not out hunting, that he had got
his dirty boots and breeches off, and dry tweeds and tartans on.

Lord Scamperdale was the eighth earl; and, according to the usual
alternating course of great English families--one generation living and the
next starving--it was his lordship's turn to live; but the seventh earl
having been rather unreasonable in the length of his lease, the present
earl, who during the lifetime of his father was Lord Hardup, had contracted
such parsimonious habits, that when he came into possession he could not
shake them off; and but for the fortunate friendship of Abraham Brown, the
village blacksmith, who had given his young idea a sporting turn, entering
him with ferrets and rabbits, and so training him on with terriers and
rat-catching, badger-baiting and otter-hunting, up to the noble sport of
fox-hunting itself, in all probability his lordship would have been a
regular miser. As it was, he did not spend a halfpenny upon anything but
hunting; and his hunting, though well, was still economically done, costing
him some couple of thousand a year, to which, for the sake of euphony, Jack
used to add an extra five hundred; 'two thousand five under'd a year,
five-and-twenty under'd a year,' sounding better, as Jack thought, and more
imposing, than a couple of thousand, or two thousand, a year. There were
few days on which Jack di